Incubation
by Epithelial
Summary: He knew that there had been something else, someone else, whom he missed terribly for so many years. But eventually the hurt faded and all he had was a name, and Dean knew that that would eventually be taken too. AU Oneshot


Hah, it's about 6 in the morning and insomnia has struck me hard. So I'm sitting here drinking day old lukewarm coffee and listening to Hannah's 90s Alt. Angst CD. I have school soon. But necessity is the birth of inspiration. I have no idea how that applies to this. Try to work it in somehow. Inspired by a deleted scene from the episode '**Home'**, in which a mechanic who knew the family before and after the whole Mary incident told Sam and Dean that he called social services on John, but before they got there, he had packed up the boys and left. My mind wanders. I digress. Watch me go. I own nothing. Unbeta'd. The ending is very crackish. I know. **R-E-V-I-E-W!**

**Incubation  
**By Epithelial

Sometimes, when Cassie was curled up beside him and her hair would rise and fall beside him, Dean felt like there was something more. The feeling never lasted longer than he wanted to, and he assumed that it was an emotion that was just a mask for his fear of commitment. But it was always grew in intensity when there was nothing to be said, usually in the moments after sex. He buried his face into the cotton sheets and away from the swan curve of Cassie's neck. He could smell the ghost of detergent and musk and his own hair and it just all somehow was _wrong_.

She twisted beside him, caught up in her own dreamkingdoms, and let out a little croon. Dean felt something uncurl in his gut, something very warm and very soft and decidedly disgusting. He sat up and tossed the sheets off. They landed with a thump on the floor, and Cassie didn't stir. He looked at her then, and felt a pang. She never chose to look as vulnerable as she did when she was sleeping. He had tried to explain that to her once, but she had thrown her head back and laughed until her stomach quivered and her hair shone with the glossy fairy lights the last owner of the apartment had strung up and never taken down. She liked to wear glitter in her ratted hair and Dean knew that he had smudges of it on his face and hands and pubic hair.

Their flat was very small and very cheap. They both could have afforded better, the children of a Midwest town mayor and a successful storeowner, respectively, but they never had felt like they needed it. Dean was still drunk from the night before--college parties and college girls never tired him-- and he could still feel the whiskey in his belly. He walked into the kitchen and leaned against the stove. His home was very still. He imagined the alcohol in his bloodstream, twisting and turning in the crossroads of his arteries.

Dean liked to think that he drank as much as he did because he was young and he wanted to, but Dean also knew better. He wasn't a talker when he drank, but she was. And god help him, he had run out of things to say to Cassie long ago. But he was twenty six and had been with the same girl for nearly a quarter of his life, and he had heard all of the jokes and stories and complaints years and years ago. He supposed that he was with her for more of a comfort factor than anything else.

He heard her call his name in the room over and he stumbled against the plane of the stove was cursed. Then he remembered that he had never turned it on and the pain became dissolute and he never wanted to leave.

---

Dean reached up and felt the thick, wet velvet curtains that covered the windows. He stretched his hands and tugged until clean sunshine drifted in. Cassie was behind him; he could hear her long black skirt rustling. She walked up beside him and folded her hands neatly into her lap and stared out to the city: the pleasant buzz of an airplane could be heard, and New York looked crisp.

Cassie was a real estate agent, and a prospective property had just gone on the market. She usually marketed towards the rich with more money than taste, and the odd Cabinet of Curiosities style loft had appealed to her. It was Saturday, and because he never had anything better to do, she dragged him along.

"Come on. We need to see if we can find any relatives to clear all of this shit out." Dean turned and watched as she lifted a dinner-plate sized pentagram from a small table. "This place doesn't even have a working refrigerator." Her comments seemed to be endless. She said next: "Dean! Come and look at this!"

He felt like he was fourteen again and breaking into the local haunted house. There had been nothing there but broken bottles and articles of clothing taken off in haste and forgotten. He remembered supposing that most of them had never been claimed because they were never able to fit on the same bodies nine months later. In the same house a few years later, when he was the one loosing the clothes, he had taken a boy named Andrew into one of the small back rooms with him, and Andrew had gotten a bit violent during the sex. He still had the scar from where he had been slammed into a shelf. Even with his face half covered in blood and the dull throbbing behind his ears, it had been one of the best experiences he could have ever asked for.

"Dean!"

He followed the sound of her voice, coming from one of the small bathrooms. The rusty light was on, and the thin stucco window was cracked, letting in the sound of the street. Cassie looked terrible in the lighting. Her face was very pale and very excited, and her mouth was twisted into a stern grimace, but her eyes gleamed. "Look at this," she breathed, her breath catching. Dean wondered if she was afraid that whatever the wonder was would disappear if she was too loud. Then he followed her gaze and his irritation faded.

Written in a dark grey on the peeling yellow plaster was Latin. Dean had no idea what it meant, but he knew that it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. The letters were large and block, and there seemed to be a smell coming from the very paint. It was sweet and almost fruity. Dean knew that he had known it from somewhere. It tickled his memory and he closed his eyes tried to picture whatever it was.

_a large hand on his shoulder peering over his neck to look at the pictures on the pages of a book the book was old pages yellowed and antique "lavender and crossroad dirt and angelica" the voice was deep and he was warm and he was _

"Do you smell that?" Cassie's voice was lilting and Dean wanted to hit her. He had no idea where the memory had come from, probably some resonance from the life he had before he had been taken in.

Dean had been adopted when he was five years old, and every now and then he remembered some fragment from his last family: blonde hair, the squeak of a hotel bed, the familiar weight of a gun in his hands. He usually thought that most of it came from watching too much television as kid, but there were times when he knew that he had been part of something that was much bigger than he could ever hope to be a part of again. He had never asked around about the people who had had him before he could remember. His mother and father loved him and would have told him anything, had he asked, but he never really wanted to know. There was something mystical about having a shadowed past, and it was one of the things that kept Dean from getting out of bed when there was nothing else.

He knew that there had been something else, someone else, whom he missed terribly for so many years. But eventually the hurt faded and all he had was a name, and Dean knew that that would eventually be taken too.

He never told Cassie about Him, but she had found the purple notebook he kept in a box in the building basement. When she asked about the name written over and over, he had stoically told her to mind her own damn business. _Sam_ was the only thing he had that was ever really his.

"Yeah. It's angelica." She didn't seem to hear him, instead ruffling through her large carry-all purse and pulling out a digital camera. The bright flash echoed in the room. She turned the camera away from the window to see the screen: "Look! You can read the words perfectly!"

"Te Gladi, Vos Gladias, trea Nomine Sancto, Albrot, Abracadabra, Jehova elico. Estote meum castellumque praesidium contra omnium hostes." Dean's voice flowed over the words. Cassie gaped at him, her lips looking very lush. He found that he couldn't say anything to answer her. She wrapped her hand around his waist and began to tug.

"Come on. I'm officially freaked out." He could feel her muscles and skin moving under the floral print shirt. She smelled like gardenias.

He let her lead him out of the apartment.

---

They crossed a wide lane of traffic and turned west, towards the loft. Dean hadn't realized that they had spent almost all day in the apartment, hadn't noticed until he looked up from the shadow of the buildings and seen the orange sky. As the sun began to go down and into the smoky clouds, Dean felt a shiver run down his skin. Cassie was still chatting amiably, noting the street vendor's shoes, the colour of the curtains in the complex across the street. She didn't seem to feel like anything was amiss, and Dean felt familiar comfort sink back into him. _It was just old feelings. Nothing to hurt you._

He turned to look at her, and spiderweb hairs floated across her face. Dean began to smile at her and then--

A man lurched in front of them. Dean heard a wet gasp escape his lips; saw the hand clutched to his side. Dean had spent enough time watching ER to know what that meant. "Hey, dude-- are you alright?" The tall man lifted his head from the base of his neck to look at Dean. He was very young, twenty one at the most, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Details seemed to burn into Dean's retina. The small curls of his hair. The dark green eyes, the open mouth, the large, graceful hands that were grappling for support.

Dean would never forget the way he looked when he fell to the ground. He was instantly at the boy's side, his hand carefully lifting up the pressed fingers. The boy's shirt was black, and in the fading light of dusk Dean couldn't tell what was bleeding. Cassie was pressed up against his back, screaming for help, but the street seemed to have emptied. He lifted up the dark cotton.

Three long gashes ran from his collarbone to the small curve of his hip. The blood was immense and it seemed to be streaked everywhere (_Dean's mind was stupidly repeating that it was everywhere, and he didn't think that it would ever stop. Later he'd wonder if he had been thinking about the blood or the broken record in his head_). The boy was gasping something, his head cradled in Dean's lap, but he couldn't seem to make it out.

Then a car drove by, not stopping for the screaming girl or the dying boy. But in one clear second, as the lights washed over the small dark corner, everything was illuminated. Dean let out a harsh, hollow noise and sprang up, letting the boy's head fall to the sidewalk. The smooth circular shape of intestines was gently resting where millions of people had walked in tireless motions for hundreds of years. Dean's stomach was wetly churning, and for an inane moment he felt as if he had held onto the boy any longer, he would have sank into him and been wrapped snug in the dark organs. For an inane moment longer, he thought that it might not have been so bad.

But then the broken boy let out a brittle, quiet gasp. And then he was still. Cassie was still screaming, and it echoed neon bright until someone noticed and called the police. Dean saw a silver knife clutched in the dead boy's hand. Etched into the blade was a small pentagram, and Dean could feel rock salt pressed into the cloth of his jeans from where it had been spilled: the dead boy's pockets.

Even though he knew no one would ever hear, Dean felt it needed to be said: "I know you. I know you. I know you." Then, later, as the lights of the city went up: "I found you."

---

Dean left Cassie a week after he watched the boy die. He didn't take anything with him except for the notebook. He had a new life to start now, but Dean knew he could never part with it. He had two hundred dollars in his pocket, along with a bus ticket to Denver. He needed to get out of New York.

As he sat down on the bus, he could feel Sam's curved blade press up against his thigh.

---

_Years passed. Dean hunted wicked things now. He knew it was what he was meant to do. _

_He did it alone, but once a week he would call Lawrence, Kansas. Missouri always knew to answer the phone. _

_And sometimes they talked of magic. _

**END**


End file.
